Barnes & Noble, which is relatively unknown over here but operates around 700 stores in the US, has agreed deals with various major content producers including HBO, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, STARZ and The Walt Disney Studio, along with Viacom and Warner Bros Home Entertainment.

The company intends to offer its collection of digital content in standard and high definition on NOOK devices, tablets and smartphones.

Available movies include Disney-Pixar's Brave and Toy Story 3 and Marvel's Avengers Assemble, along with 21 Jump Street and The Artist.

Television shows include Breaking Bad, Dora the Explorer, The Walking Dead, True Blood and Game of Thrones.

All videos streamed and downloaded from the NOOK Store are stored in the NOOK Cloud remote storage service, which is available on NOOK devices and the soon-to-be-released NOOK Video apps.

This means that UltraViolet users will be able to link their accounts to the NOOK Cloud, allowing them to view their previous and new UltraViolet movies and TV shows on NOOK devices and NOOK Video apps.

"As one of the world's largest retailers of physical video discs and digital copyrighted content, our new NOOK Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection, as part of our expansive NOOK Store," said William J Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble.

"The launch of our new digital video service with our long-time studio partners allows us to bring award-winning current and classic movies, TV shows, documentaries and more to millions of customers' screens, coming soon."